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How Leicestershire is changing

"With our own council houses we are working to turn around empty ones as quickly as possible to bring them back into use.

“We also have the power to use compulsory purchase orders to buy privately-owned houses and do them up and sell them again.”

Like all local authorities, Leicester City Council is able to charge a 50 per cent inflated rate of council tax where a landlord leaves a property empty for an extended period of time.

Sir Peter Soulsby

But Sir Peter said the council – rather than just taking more money from the landlord – sometimes found it more productive to use its own resources to help the owner get the property on the market and then make the money back from the sale.

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He said: “We can use increased council tax as a deterrent but actually with some of them it’s owners who for a variety of reasons lose the ability to get on with doing something with their property and they just become abandoned.

"In those cases we can use our own resources and renovate and sell them.”

The broken down figures from around the county show that there are currently:

404 empty homes in North West Leicestershire

98 in Melton borough

381 in Hinckley and Bosworth

314 in Harborough

608 in Charnwood

141 in Oadby and Wigston

436 in Blaby

Blaby is the only Leicestershire district that has failed to reduce the number of empty properties over recent years.

Since 2010 the number of empty homes recorded in the district has risen from 304 in 2010 to 373 in 2015 and then 436 last year.

A house in Narborough Road South stood empty for 30 years before being brought back into use by Blaby District Council

In 2014 an eyesore property in Narborough Road South was brought back into use by Blaby District Council, but that followed years of trying to work with the owner, who lived in Canada.

Sheila Scott, member of the cabinet executive responsible for housing, said she was not aware her council was underperforming.

She said: “We do have some empty houses but we are working quickly to get them back in circulation.

"There’s one in my own village that was recently brought back into use.

“I didn’t realise we were falling behind other councils but people are working on that to bring the number down.”